Tag Archives: kids musical crafts

One of my favorite instruments to bring around to schools is a water drum made from a gourd. Kids and adults are often shocked when I pour water into one of the gourds and float the other on top to create the drum. Then they are amazing by the deep, resonant sound. But where did a unique and creative instrument like this come from? Interestingly enough, gourd water drums are found in both African cultures and in the indigenous cultures that inhabit present day Mexico and the Southwestern United States.

We caught up with a talented musician from Los Angeles named Christopher Garcia who not only plays them, but has thoroughly researched their background and shares these traditional instruments with audiences around the world.

And, at the end of this post, you’ll find our DIY water drum craft. Although our plastic water drum doesn’t sound exactly like the real thing, it does produce great drum sounds and is a fun way to encourage sensory play with water and sound.

Before Spanish Conquistadors arrived in present day Mexico and the Southwestern US, indigenous cultures such as the Yaqui were flourishing with rich music and cultural lives. Many of these indigenous groups trace their history to the civilizations of the Mayan and Aztec peoples. Beautiful and unusual instruments used in their music include the water drum, singing stones, unique flutes and a marimba made of turtle shells. Christopher details many of these unique instruments at his website below, but here you can see him playing the gourd water drum and the gourd water drum plus the turtle shell marimba and singing stones.

Turtle Shells, Singing Stones And a Wooden Drum

Make Your Own Version Of A Gourd Water Drum

We’ve done a whole post on taking various sized rounded plastic containers, floating them on the surface of the water and getting some of the same tones you’d hear on gourd water drums. You can get creative and try it yourself in a bucket, kiddie pool or basin of water, or check out that full post at the link below.

If you’ve ever made a homemade tambourine or sistrum, you’ve probably wanted to use bangles like those seen on traditional middle eastern drums or instruments. Technically, these round thin mini-cymbals are called zils. You can see some lovely large zils on this antique tambourine from the Middle East.

If you’re crafting an instrument that uses these bangles, it’s easy to make a simple version of zils out of recycled bottle caps using a few tools that are handy around any home or garage.

What You Need

Metal bottle caps
Piece of Wood
Hammer
Large nail with a head
Safety Goggles

Safety First

Although this is a reasonably safe and easy project, it’s always a good idea to use caution. Wearing safety goggles means that your eyes and face are protected if you accidentally hit the cap too hard and it bounces off the wooden work surface. In general, a good tip for this project is to use the hammer slowly and gently, tapping repeatedly until you get the desired results.

Set Up A Work Area

Set the piece of wood down either on the floor, the ground or a sturdy table. Place the metal bottle cap (cap-side-up) and then position the large nail above it, directly in the center. Gently tap until the nail has pierced the cap and reached down into the wood. This creates the hole that will allow you to thread it onto whatever you are making.

Next, With cap-side-down, next gently strike all the edges of the bottle cap until it slowly flattens. This can take 15, 20 or more gentle taps with the hammer.

Next, turn the bottle cap over. Continue to tap the outer edges and the inner circle until all the sharp edges are flattened and pressed into the cap’s surface. Although some recycled projects use the bottle caps in their original form – such as the wooden sistrum from Africa seen below – flattening the bangles makes them safer to handle and use in any project.

If you’re doing this project with very small children, you might wish to create the bangles in advance and focus more on how the children can string the bangles plus other rattling objects onto their craft instrument.

Wondering what else you could add to a tambourine or sistrum project? In addition to bottle cap zils, you can add paper clips, buttons, jingles, beads or pull tabs from soda cans. Remember, while you’re reducing, reusing and recycling, you’re also teaching kids to limit their use of resources but never limit their imagination or creativity!

Will you be going camping, hosting a summer camp or just having a staycation in the great outdoors of your big backyard?

If so, music may be one of the creative activities you can include to make it even more enriching, fun and memorable. Here’s a compilation of our most popular “making music outdoors” posts.

Make a Rhythm Tree

You already have the components for a large outdoor percussion place right in your garage or recycling bin! A bit of artistic creativity can turn them into items to adorn a tree for free form musical expression. Don’t have the perfect tree? You can always substitute a clothesline or rope for a different version of this great kids project. Check out the full post here:

This super-simple craft starts with a wide-mouth recyclable container and ends – anywhere you want it to! Talk a hike around your local park, lake or playground and you can identify and gather materials that will shake rattle and roll for you. Do this activity for younger kids as a sensory craft or for older kids as a plant or natural object identification quest. Or a scavenger hunt. Anyone up for finding a fern frond, a hickory nut or a pine cone? All the details are here: http://www.tinytappingtoes.com/early-learning-with-music/make-an-earth-day-nature-walk-rattle/

Make a Bullroarer!

Want to create a musical instrument shared by both Australian Aboriginal and Native American peoples? Make and play a bullroarer and you should be able to hear it an amazingly long distance away. Since this requires a bit of space to play, it’s perfect for large open spaces or as an outdoor activity. Check out the crazy sound it makes and the complete post about Australian instruments here: http://www.tinytappingtoes.com/uncategorized/outdoor-musical-play-make-your-own-bullroarer/

You don’t need to go to a music camp to learn basic songwriting with easy activities like this that take a recognizable melody and help you craft your own lyrics. Use the Earth Day theme or choose another subject and you’re on your way to creating a personalized soundtrack to this summer’s fun. No previous songwriting experience needed! Check it out here: http://www.tinytappingtoes.com/classroom-music/sing-your-own-earth-day-song/

Have you ever wanted your child to learn a set of Global ABC’s? Here, we’ve chose, “I” for musical INSTRUMENT!

What is Your National Instrument?

All over the world, countries and cultures have instruments that seem to speak from the soul of that group of people. Think about a didgeridoo from Aboriginal Australia or a balalaika from Russia or a Taiko drum from Japan. Finding out about these special and significant musical instruments can be a great way to learn about the country you live in, your family heritage or another country or region you may be studying. Below is a link to a huge list of countries and their national instruments.

Color An Instrument

You can learn all about instruments by coloring them. Discover what they are made of, what they sound like or add your own colorful combinations to familiar instruments like the guitar. Below you’ll find a link to lots of free coloring pages you can use to explore guitars, sitars, bombo drums and even a rattle made from the toenails of goats! There’s also a link to online coloring for African shekeres, American washboards, Latin American guiros and more!

Hear An Instrument

Okay, you’ve played with an instrument of choice and colored it in your own special way, now what does it sound like? It can be fun to explore music by visiting music festivals, local performances (like the one pictured to the right) or by borrowing recordings or videos from your local library. You can also look up unique instruments on the internet to find out what they sound like or how they are played. Below is a link where you can click and hear Australian didgeridoos, Peruvian box drums, Appalachian lap dulcimers and lots more!

Make An Instrument

Before there were music stores – almost everyone crafted their own instrument! There are some especially wonderful kid’s craft versions of simple instruments available on the internet such as Egyptian sistrum rattles, African tongue rattles and even a recycled version of a Native American turtle shell rattle. You can find many of them on the DARIA MUSIC website as free pdf’s below.

Kids Play… Instruments!

And what is more inspiring than watching a young child play a musical instrument with true beauty and grace? Feel free to check out Multicultural Kids Music Vids- a curated Youtube video site that shows young kids playing Hawaiian ukuleles, Bolivian charangos, Chinese New year drums and more. Not only are they keeping up beautiful cultural traditions, but they are showing us what a child can do to make the world a more artistic and beautiful place!

The Chinese Lunar New Year is quickly approaching! Here’s a fun musical craft for one of the most popular noise-makers played by children at this time of year.

The Bolang Gu (波浪鼓；pinyin: bo lang gu) is a simple instrument also called a monkey drum, a pellet drum or a rattle drum. It’s a two-sided drum with small beads or pellets attached to it’s sides. When the drum is played the pellets bounce off both sides and create a really unique sound. Although these clever little instruments are often used by street vendors and seen as children’s toys, they also date back to ceremonies held in the Song Dynasty of China and are part of religious rituals in Tibet, Mongolia, India, and Taiwan.

Make Your Own Bolang Gu

Making your own version of this creative little craft is easy. The supplies you need for one drum are: 2 paper plates, 1 cardboard paper towel roll, stapler, tape, a bit of string or twine, 2 beads and any materials you like for decoration.

Decorate Your Drum

If you’re going to decorate your plates, it helps to do this first. In fact, it can be a good idea to have many plates and try lots of designs, then select your favorites for the two faces of your drum.

What themes to use for your decorations? Choose any of the Chinese zodiac animals, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese New Year printables or whatever else inspires you! Once your plates are created, move on to the next step.

Assemble Your Drum

Place your two paper plates “back-to-back”. Apply a few staples to hold them in place. Press the top part of your cardboard tube together slightly and insert about 1 – 2 inches inside the paper plates, where you want the handle to be. Continue stapling around the plates until you reach the other side and staple right up to the handle. This should hold it firmly in place, but you can also add decorative tape to make it even more sturdy and to add a design element.

Add the Pellets

Now it’s time to add the beads. Start my making two holes on the right and left side of the drum halfway up the paper plates. Use a hole punch to make your 2 holes or have an adult help by poking the holes in the paper plates with the tip of a nail or an awl. Knot a bead onto a small piece of string, twine or embroidery thread and tie onto each side, leaving about 2 – 3 inches of string. The length of string allows the beads to bounce back and forth to create the signature sound of the drum.

Play Your Drum

Although this little drum looks so simple, there are actually quite a few ways to play it. Place the handle between two hands and “rub” back and forth for the classic sound effect of a monkey drum. Or hold in one hand and rotate the drum back and forth while you move your arm like a dancer. In fact, if you take a look at the video below, the three dancers are using bolang gu as part of a wonderful and energetic dance routine.

Feel free to get just as creative and make up your own moves and inventive ways to make music with your new drum!

Win A Real Bolang Gu

During the month of February 2015, you can visit DARIA MUSIC for a chance to win this beautifully decorated Bolang Gu. Drop by her monthly song page here for the easy entry: http://www.dariamusic.com/monthly_song.php

What a fun time to make and play several different types of rattles that are found in Native cultures. Each rattle here is easy to make and can be used to explore Native American music and dance or for any musical activity with young children!

TURTLE ISLAND RATTLE

Did you know that the North American continent is often called “Turtle Island” based on a story that comes from an Haudenosaunee/Iroquois legend? Turtles also figure prominently in the lore and legends of many Native American tribes across the USA and Canada. Although the actual rattle is made from a turtle shell, this craft uses supplies that can be found around any house or classroom.

What do you need for a recycled turtle rattle? One take-out container of any size, a small amount of materials to fill the rattle (birdseed, pebbles, paper clips, etc.) a bit of glue and a piece of felt, poster board or foam to make the turtle’s body. Plus you’ll want to have some materials to help decorate the rattle, such as paint, glitter and glue or permanent markers and possibly some googley eyes for the turtle.

So many Native rattles are made from materials found in the natural world. Chapchas – from the Andes – are made of a rather unusual natural material, the clipped toenails of sheep or goats. The nails are boiled and sterilized then a hot needle punctures a hole in the nail so they can be threaded onto a strip of fabric about the size of a bracelet.

Don’t worry – our recycled version of this instrument does not require chasing any sheep, goats or llamas for their toenail clippings! Instead, we start with a piece of yarn and weave in things that jingle as well as click and clack. We suggest a variety of household items such as buttons, beads, paper clips, jingle bells or dried pasta, to name a few.

One of our favorite bloggers – Leanna (from All Done Monkey!) just posted this craft that her family made from the book they were reading (The Cherokee by Rennay Craats). In the book, these noise-makers helped a child know what they might hear at a special ceremony of the Cherokee. You can find the activity and the full post here:

We’re excited to be part of the MKB network’s awesome blog hop that shares all aspects of Hispanic culture. Our contribution is a free and fun E-book that shares 10 Musical Crafts you can make to explore these exciting and meaningful cultural traditions.

And please, read on. There are contests, give-aways and lots of other great activities and information from some really awesome bloggers that I hope you get a chance to meet through this wonderful blog Hop. And don’t forget to scroll through the prizes to find and enter the Rafflecopter below!

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month!

Welcome to the Third Annual Hispanic Heritage Month Blog Hop, hosted this year by Multicultural Kid Blogs and 17 of our member blogs! Don’t miss our amazing giveaway, and share your own posts at our linky!

Hispanic Heritage Month runs from September 15 to October 15 every year, “celebrating the histories, cultures and contributions of American citizens whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean and Central and South America” (from HispanicHeritageMonth.gov)

Be sure to visit all of the participating blogs (listed below) and follow our related Pinterest boards:

Hispanic Heritage Month GIVEAWAY!

This year to celebrate we are giving away fabulous prizes! Be sure to enter the Rafflecopter at the bottom of this post for a chance to win!

Please note that there are shipping restrictions on some prizes. In the event that the winner lives outside of the shipping area, that portion of the prize will be added to the following prize package.

Grand Prize Package

Smart Play Pad (SRP $ 24.99): Interactive tablet like electronic toy makes early learning fun and exciting for little ones. More than 30 touch sensitive keys teach language and pronunciation skills to help prepare children for school. Bilingual feature helps kids learn in English & Spanish. Lightweight and truly portable for on-the-go learning. Ships to US and Canada only.

A basket of fun from Escuela Falcón in Guanajuato, Gto., Mexico. This prize includes educational games, ceramic Day of the Dead skulls, a hand-painted ceramic box, wooden toys, and a certificate for 5 hours of Skype Spanish lessons with Escuela Falcón.

A basket from Lanugo with the book “Lula la Consentida,” a limited-edition “Latino de Corazón” infant onsie, and Seventh Generation’s baby product essentials. US shipping only.

First Prize Package

A child’s sweater and bag from Peru courtesy of Kid World Citizen. The handmade, wool sweater is typical from the Andes and might fit a child ages 2-4. The little backpack is also handmade with gorgeous details typical of the region.